One assumption behind some of the best technology is that something small, unimportant, or irrelevant might not stay that way.

The Making of a Computer Scientist.

Evolution works creatively, with a bootstrapping tactic. Every level of the system sends feedback to every other level.

I find that nothing but very close and intense application to subjects of a scientific nature now seems at all to keep my imagination from running wild, or to stop up the void which seems to be left in my mind from a want of excitement.

The engine will be able to perform tasks that no human can manage.

The object of the engine is in fact to give the utmost practical efficiency to the resources of numerical interpretations of the higher science of analysis, while it uses the processes and combinations of this latter.

Owing to some peculiarity in my nervous system, I have perception of some things, which no one else has; or at least very few, if any… I can throw rays from every quarter of the universe into one vast focus.

In considering any new subject, there is frequently a tendency, first, to overrate what we find to be already interesting or remarkable; and, secondly, by a sort of natural reaction, to undervalue the true state of the case, when we do discover that our notions have surpassed those that were really tenable.

Make a difference about something other than just making money.

The machine can be programmed to perform any operation that can be expressed in symbolic form.

I think I am more determined than ever in my future plans, and I have quite made up my mind that nothing must be suffered to interfere with them. I intend to make such arrangements in town as will secure me a couple of hours daily (with very few exceptions) for my studies.

Imagination is the Discovering Faculty, pre-eminently … It is that which feels & discovers what is, the REAL which we see not, which exists not for our senses… Mathematical science shows what is. It is the language of unseen relations between things… Imagination too shows what is … Hence she is or should be especially cultivated by the truly Scientific, those who wish to enter into the worlds around us!

Artists, poets, music-makers: all have the gift of seeing how general principles might be applied to all the senses.

I am much pleased to find how very well I stand work & how my powers of attention & continued effort increase.

I am convinced that the Analytical Engine will be able to create music.

I am in a charming state of confusion.

Thus not only the mental and the material, but the theoretical and the practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connection with each other.

If you know the why and the how, you will probably figure out the what.

The science of operations, as derived from mathematics more especially, is a science of itself, and has its own abstract truth and value.

It is a wonderful thing to be able to think and to feel the beauty of a mathematical relationship.

As soon as I have got flying to perfection, I have got a scheme about a steam engine.

A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind than the means hitherto in our possession have rendered possible.

The early digital pioneers were able to conceive of something that didn’t yet exist because they were possessed of something we often only ascribe to artists: imagination.

I was rather foolish in saying that I did not like arithmetic and to learn figures when I did – I was not thinking quite what I was about. The sums can be done better, if I tried, than they are.

We may say that the engine thinks, and that it can think through the method of operations, by which it produces results.

I believe myself to possess a most singular combination of qualities exactly fitted to make me pre-eminently a discoverer of the hidden realities of nature.

One essential object is to choose that arrangement which shall tend to reduce to a minimum the time necessary for completing the calculation.

The engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.

I shall, in due time, be a Poet.

The science of operations, as derived from mathematics more especially, is a science of itself.

I never am really satisfied that I understand anything; because, understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand about the many connections and relations which occur to me, how the matter in question was first thought of or arrived at, etc., etc.

We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.

Religion to me is science and science is religion.

I am never so happy as when I am really engaged in good earnest, & it makes me must wonderfully cheerful & merry at other times, which is curious & very satisfactory.

I have a great deal of confidence in the future of the Analytical Engine.

Mathematical science shows what is. It is the language of unseen relations between things. But to use and apply that language, we must be able fully to appreciate, to feel, to seize the unseen, the unconscious.

The intellectual, the moral, the religious seem to me all naturally bound up and interlinked together in one great and harmonious whole.

There is no great invention without a great imagination.

Imagination is the Discovering Faculty, pre-eminently. It is that which penetrates into the unseen worlds around us, the worlds of Science.

The Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere calculating machines.

If you can’t give me poetry, can’t you give me poetical science?

The more I study, the more insatiable do I feel my genius for it to be.

Imagination is the Discovering Faculty, pre-eminently.

I am in the habit of thinking of the universe as a vast machine.

Those who have learned to walk on the threshold of the unknown worlds, by means of what are commonly termed par excellence the exact sciences, may then, with the fair white wings of imagination, hope to soar further into the unexplored amidst which we live.

Understand well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand.

A new science cannot be imposed as a ready-made garment.

That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal, as time will show.